It’s hot as hell in New Orleans. Anyone surprised? I’m certainly not.

The big local story remains the mess at the Sewerage & Water Board.  The temporary head of the agency tried to give two employees raises but they were all forced out instead. Score one for Mayor Cantrell. She finally put some points on the board amidst an early rebellion by the City Council.

The SWB billing melodrama continues. One of the people caught up in that clusterfuck is my old friend Karen Gadbois who wrote about it in the online publication she co-founded, The Lens. Check it out. You may need to check your blood pressure after reading it.

The SWB saga poses the eternal question: where have you gone Ed Norton?

That concludes this impromptu edition of Album Cover Art Saturday. Time to go down the sewer with Norton:

This week’s theme song was written by John Hiatt for his classic 1988 album Slow Turning. Icy Blue Heart is one of the best “tears in your beer” weepers of all-time. We have John’s original followed by a cover by the sublime Emmylou Harris with Bonnie Raitt on backing vocals. The Bonster is pretty awesome too.

The opening lines of that song get me every time:

She came on to him like a slow moving cold front.

His beer was warmer than the look in her eyes.

Now that we’ve wept bitter tears, it’s time to dry off and jump to the break.

I mentioned John Hiatt’s great Slow Turning album. Here’s the tunesmith playing the title track live in 1997 backed by the Nashville Queens:

Holy wet Germans, Batman.

I felt uninspired by the long form articles I encountered on the interweb this week, so we’re going to keep this all loose and segmenty much like an overripe orange. An inelegant but accurate image.

We begin our second act with a blast from the past; not to be confused with the hilarious Hugh Wilson-Brendan Fraser-Christopher Walken movie of that title.

The Adrastos Wayback Machine: We’re in the Katrinaversary zone so I thought I’d trot out two of the posts I wrote as the 10-year anniversary approached in 2015. The first piece is one of the most read and commented upon posts since we moved to Word Press.

Katrinaversary Blues: Of Resilience Tours, Carpetbloggers & Disaster Tourists.

The next day, I wrote about some tacky geegaws being sold to “celebrate” the anniversary.

 Killer Kitsch: The Hurricane Katrina Snowglobe.

For some reason I cannot shrink that title without opening a new file. I’m too lazy to do that. What can I tell ya?

Let’s see what’s happening on the Tweeter Tube.

Tweet Of The Week: The Pulp Librarian posted a thread about synthesizers. The second tweet contains my favorite image:

Just as important as the synth was the sequencer: hardware or software to record and play back sequences of notes. Step sequencers were common in drum machines, letting you programme complex percussion. Others could be connected to analogue synths to allow complex arrangements. pic.twitter.com/n7HGB2RWKl

— Pulp Librarian (@PulpLibrarian) August 20, 2018

I ain’t having nun of that…

Let’s move on to our favorite stolen feature.

Separated At Birth: Quisling week continues here at First Draft. I’ve already compared Trumpberius to the Norwegian turncoat. Trump’s former flack Sean Spicer bears an eerie resemblance to the Scandinavian Fascist:

The good news since I’m half-Norwegian is that Gum Spice is Irish-German, which is bad news for Dr. A since she has all three strains in her gene pool. It reminds me of this scene from The Godfather:

I let the crude movie mogul, Jack Woltz, throw about the ethnic slurs so I don’t have to.

Saturday GIF Horse: While we’re on the subject of The Godfather, here are a few GIFS from that movie classic including the horse’s head scene. Feel free to insert your own scream.

I’ve always loved the opening scene of the movie. Here’s Don Vito petting a cat while he listens to the undertaker Bonasera’s plea for vengeance:

Meow, baby.

Documentary Of The Week: I’m doing something different with this segment. Here’s an episode from the excellent 2010 series  Nazi Collaborators on (who else?) Vidkun Quisling:

How do you follow Quisling? With a quote about one of the founding fathers, that’s how.

The Weekly GV: Here’s the Master on Thomas Jefferson from his classic 1973 novel, Burr:

“But then in all his words if not deeds Jefferson was so beautifully human, so eminently vague, so entirely dishonest but not in any meretricious way. Rather it was a passionate form of self-delusion that rendered Jefferson as president and as man (not to mention as writer of tangled sentences and lunatic metaphors) confusing even to his admirers. Proclaiming the unalienable rights of man for everyone (excepting slaves, Indians, women and those entirely without property), Jefferson tried to seize the Floridas by force, dreamed of a conquest of Cuba, and after his illegal purchase of Louisiana sent a military governor to rule New Orleans against the will of its inhabitants.”
― Gore Vidal, Burr

Given the world’s current fascination with Hamilton, I thought a dose of Aaron Burr was in order. In that excerpt, GV is writing in the first person as the former Veep.

Saturday Classic: John Hiatt, Nick Lowe, Ry Cooder, and Jim Keltner had so much fun recording Hiatt’s Bring The Family album that they decided to form a roots rock supergroup, Little Village. The resulting album was mediocre with many fans suspecting that the artists saved their best songs for their solo projects. Their live shows, however, were stellar. Here’s an audio recording of a Beantown concert.

 

That’s it for this week. The last word goes to Little Village. Holy crap, it’s the same picture as above. Oh well, what the hell.